Friday, 7 February 2014

Media Quotes of the Week: From Hope monsters Le President to Grey Cardigan savages Newsquest

Christopher Hope of the Daily Telegraph to President Hollande: "Monsieur le President, I know this is a very sensitive
subject for you. Do
you think your private life has made France an international joke, are
you still having an affair with Julie Gayet and do you wish she was
here?"

News UK boss Mike Darcey on MailOnline, as quoted byPress Gazette: "It shouldn’t be confused with a business based on professional journalism ... It is largely a redistributor, rather than a generator,
copying and re-writing content from social media sites, and from other
traditional news outlets, including The Sun. And of course the focus is on a genre of content which is unlikely to be holding our politicians to account. So it’s not a model that 11 UK national newspapers can all follow while seeking to preserve their purpose.”

Andrew Neil
‏@afneilon Twitter: "Sadly Sky has not invited me
to any celebrations. Guess Rupert Murdoch told them to erase me from
Sky's history. Well, I only launched it!"

The Sunday Times [£] in a leader on David Hunt, the crime boss it exposed: "Even where corruption has not stood in the way of convicting those like Mr
Hunt, the police have all too often been content to target the “low hanging
fruit” of criminal operations — the drug couriers, dealers and other foot
soldiers — rather than the much tougher task of pursuing gangland bosses. As
John O’Connor, a former commander of Scotland Yard’s flying squad, puts it:
“They have not been doing the nitty-gritty stuff which takes lots of
resources. The hope has to be that this will change and that the new National Crime
Agency (NCA) will bring Mr Hunt to justice in a way that the Met and Soca
failed to do. “Someone like David Hunt is always going to be of interest to
us,” the NCA said in a statement. We await developments."

Adam Boulton in theGuardian: "I love Jon Snow,
he has been a mentor of mine, but you do sometimes wonder how many
presenters they can cram into their [Channel 4 News] studio. I saw Jon
at a summit, he was reporting on his own. I said, 'it's nice to see you
without the muppets'. It's not that the individuals are muppets, it's
that idea of the big figure surrounded by a whole load of other figures
all fighting over the autocue. I think it's Jon's show."

Michael Wolff in USA Today: "Journalists don't like advertising. It is both the corrupting
influence and the hard taskmaster, to which they always dream of being
free. But save for a few rare instances where information is so
valuable or beloved that customers will pay for it, advertising is the
only thing that has ever paid the news bill. We don't need
journalists solving the problem of news. We need people with far more
cunning and inventive commercial minds. But there are few of those."

Alex Stevenson of Index on Censorship:
"What’s at stake here is simple: the ability of journalists to protect
their sources. This is critical. Without it confidence in journalism is
undermined and fewer whistleblowers will come forward in the future.
This is why the government’s latest bid to make life harder for
Britain’s hacks – coming so soon after the gagging bill – is so very
deeply worrying.
The plans effectively scrap legal guarantees that journalists’
lawyers can contest “production orders” demanding the surrender of key
documents. The measure forms part of the coalition’s deregulation bill."

Andrew Pierce
‏@toryboypierceon Twitter: "SallyBercow wants the media to 'leave me alone'. This the same witless woman who went in the Celeb Big Brother House."

Grey Cardigan on The Spin Alley: "SADLY, we have grown accustomed in recent years to seeing arrogant and uncaring newspaper managements shifting subbing jobs from individual newspapers to centralised production hubs. These faceless fuckwits take no account of the ruined careers and wrecked marriages left behind; their sole concern is the bottom line and the size of their next bonus. Want to keep your job? Well it’s moving to the other side of the country. Put your house on the market, find new schools for your children, tell your wife that she’s moving away from friends and family, and all because of a single stroke of a beancounter’s ballpoint. The latest victims of this pointless pogrom are 29 subs on Newsquest’s titles in Darlington, York and Bradford, whose jobs are moving 270 miles away from York to Newport in South Wales. Now we’re not talking about a bundle of nondescript weekly freesheets here which can no longer sustain their own staffs. Included in the cull are 11 subs from the Northern Echo, by anybody’s standards a ‘proper’ newspaper. Founded in 1870, it is a paragon of the provincial Press and numbers Sir Harry Evans amongst its former editors. And at the heart of this very individual newspaper are its subs, a fount of local knowledge and finely attuned to the needs of the readership."

About Me

I am a freelance journalist based in the UK and was deputy editor of Press Gazette, the journalists' magazine, from 1993 until 2006. I want to give an independent view on media matters.
You can contact me with stories, ideas and comments by email at jon.slattery369@btinternet.com You can also follow me on Twitter @jonslattery